Last fall, I built this table to sit in our living room next to the prairie sofa and love seat set I’d just completed. I zigged instead of zagged and went for this modern/organic style to complement the traditional style of the sofas. I blogged about the design process on my site, so check that out if you’d like to see more build and design photos.

This is a drawing table I designed and built last November of 2015. It is cherry, finished with amber shellac and wax. I have been wanting to improve by own drawing and drafting skills for designing furniture projects, and had no good place to do it. I was inspired by a simple workman like pine example I saw in a boutique store locally…

... and started out with that design in mind. But of course, I ended up refining it, as the original was too bulky, and I wanted to make something a little more elegant. I ran into a little trouble with the tilt hardware, as I really wanted to get a pair of old fashioned semi-circle hardware, but was unable to source any that weren’t already attached to a vintage or antique table. I settled upon using these casement window stays, and they work very well. I posted this in my projects gallery on my website at http://dcwwoodworks.com/drawing-table/ . My friend Marcus Mader took the excellent studio photos.

This was a straight up reproduction Stickley Morris chair, pretty much sticking to the one Bob Lang wrote about in Popular Woodworking #189. I’ve always wanted to make one of these, and finally I got the chance. I went for all the details; the slant on the bottom rail on the sides, real through mortises for the arms (as opposed to faking them with plugs), etc. It was good challenge and a lot of fun. A local upholsterer did a great job on her end, and the result works well in my house. Did I mention it is super comfortable? It is my go to “Im gong to sit down and read woodworking books” chair.

This is a traditional joiner’s mallet , made with a maple head and a hickory shaft. It took an afternoon in to make. I used the bandsaw to rough out the block and handle, and hand tools for the rest. I had to replace me old oak mallet, as it had split. The old one had the handle fixed in place by wedges and glue, and the new one allows the handle to be removed, yet still solidly wedges tight when in use. The new one seems about 50% heavier than the old, and is a little bigger. It’s a big improvement, and was a fun build.

Made from quarter sawn white oak, dye stain and shellac finish. Leather upholstery. Completed in June of 2015. This is an interpretation of the classic L. & J. G. Stickley No. 220 Settle. That piece uses frame and panels for the sides and backs, where I opted for rows of spindles, and then created a love seat to match. I’d always loved this design, and on a leap of faith, near the end of the build, we got rid of our existing old sofa and love seat on the hopes these would be comfortable. They were! This was the first time I worked with an upholsterer, and worked with a a great local shop that did and excellent job.

A few months ago, I built this simple bench from walnut. The design was adapted from one in the H. H. Windsor “Mission Furniture: How To Make It” series, published in 1909 (PDF and eBook downloadable for free from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/25975 at Project Gutenberg). I’d had this book for a while, and while most of the designs are a little clunky, they’re charming. This piece, particularly the odd cut-out shape at the base of the legs, seemed intriguing to me. It has that medieval-meets-modern feel of the early English Arts and Crafts movement. I also wanted to make something with wedged tenons/tusk tenons, something I hadn’t done before. I was wary about removing too much material on the stretcher where the wedge applies pressure. I suppose I’ll get braver in the future and make those a little thinner. This was a very straight ahead build, and didn’t take very long. It is finished with Arm-R-Seal urethane + oil blend. It’s worked out well this past winter as the “sit down and take your boots off” bench by the front door.

I thought I’d try my hand at a knife block. Nothing groundbreaking here, just gluing up layers, slicing with the bandsaw, then dado-ing out the slots, re-glueing, and smoothing. I did add an exterior holder for the sharpening steel, and a smaller block for smaller knives on the front. This was made from hard maple, and walnut. I finished it with an oil + urethane blend. It came out nice. Now I need to get some nice knives for it.

My wife is a drummer, and her snare had a thin, brass shell. While she liked the attack, it was “ring-y”, and she wanted a more solid sound. I thought I would try my hand at a stave snare, and found lots of info online on how to build and calculate cutting the pieces.

You woodworkers will notice a sort of “mistake” in the build photos. I approached this like a piece of furniture, so of course, I used a nice board, and wanted to cut the staves so that the grain was continuous around the shell. So the “mistake” (after I’d already cut the parts) was that the glue joints were all end grain to end grain. The “correct” way would have been to cut them so that the grain was oriented vertically, making for long grain to long grain joints. I decided to stick with what I’d cut, as it just looked too good. I figured that if the joints fell apart during the fairly vigorous smoothing out process, so be it.

The most laborious part of this build was smoothing over the faceted faces of the staves. No Virginia, I don’t have a lathe, and that meant rounding them over had to happen by other means. For the outside, I was able to use a hand plane for the high corners (which would have been easier if the grain was running vertically), and then a belt sander. My belt sander is 4”, and the shell is about 5 3/4” deep, so I had to keep shuffling the shell left to right, while turning it like a wheel. For the inside, which wasn’t as important, I set the shell on a bench hook, then used a big round plane to take off most of the waste, then I used an oscillating spindle sander to smooth the rest. The oscillating spindle sander only went 4” too, so I had to keep flipping the shell over, back and forth. Then it was finished up with hand sanding.

I left the inside a little thick (just under 1/2”), and we put it into her snare rims and gave it a try for sound. The thought was that if it was a little too low or dead sounding, I’d thin the walls a bit more, approaching the typical snare shell thickness of 3/8”. But the sound was good, and no more ringing. The snare system she has is the Pearl Floating Snare system, which essentially just sandwiches the shell between the rims: no need to drill any holes to fit lugs. That makes switching out shells super easy. But, we kept it in the snare for a few months, and played several shows with it, and many practices. Either I got it perfect the first time out, or she just grew to like it, she felt there was no need to change the thickness.

So, it was back to the shop for finishing, and that was just several layers of padded-on blonde shellac, with a coat of paste wax buffed on with steel wool. With that all nice and pretty, its a good match for the guitar head enclosure I made a few months back. Throughout the whole process of smoothing, planing, sanding, going into the snare, back out again, and finishing, the “mistake” of the long grain to long grain glue joints wasn’t a problem. It is very, very solid. And of course, once sandwiched in the snare rims, is pretty well supported all over anyway.

I liked this project, and will do other shells from different woods, and we’ll try them out and see how they effect the sound. I’ll also try both types of grain direction, to see if that effects how easy or hard it is to round over the stave facets. I am also going to be getting a the in the shop, and with the right chuck/holder, should be able to do the smoothing there, which should be much faster.

I blogged about this over on my site, basically the same text, but a few more build and final photos. Thanks for looking.

I made this little coaster set and stand recently. The coasters are walnut, the stand is elm, and then I used adhesive backed cork. The round holes were made with a router and a template. The underside bevels were made with a tenoning jig on the table saw. It was finished with lacquer and then some paste wax buffed on with steel wool. I hope the coasters will hold up, as I’m afraid they might cup. Time will tell.

This was a simple little project that was born out of necessity. We didn’t have a good place to put on and take off boots near the back door. While I’m planning on doing a whole big hall tree, that isn’t going to happen this winter. So I went for a simple d for bench. I picked up a few 6’ 2×12s at the big box store, looking for the driest ones I could find, and ones with the most quarter and rift grain as possible. I did some ripping and glue up to make fully quarter and rift pieces, and put this together. The stretcher is held in by wedged through tenons, with walnut wedges. I then did two coats of milk paint; green first, then black, and scuff sanded it all over, leaning in on the edges to cut through the paint for effect. Then it was all clear coated with clear shellac, sanded back here and there. The result is a nice, solid bench, with a nice old timey appearance. It has some shaker like elements to it. I didn’t really use any plans, or even drawings. I just built it on the fly using things I’ve seen before. Nothing new here, just a simple, basic build. It’s possible that the fir will dry out and cause issues, but we’ll see. This only took a few days of partial shop time to complete.

From a nice pile of red & white oak cutoffs and scraps, I made these four wastepaper baskets. The designs were inspired by a few images I’d seen online, then adapted to suit my taste. The “slats” design has angled mortise & tenons, which is the first time I’d tried that. I made two versions on the “leaves” design, one with leather loops, and the other with brass clips. The brass clips turned out to be pretty tricky to bend cleanly, so the results were so-so. The leather loops, fastened with copper rivets, worked out much better, and were easier to execute as well. I think I like working with other materials in my woodworking.

All in all, this was a lot of fun, and I was glad to class up the house by replacing various plastic garbage cans with these.

Another Craftsman doorbell cover, but this time made for a customer. They found my previous build on my blog, and wanted one for their home. It was a lot of fun going back and re-working a previous piece. This came out better, of course, as I learned better ways to approach it, and my skills have improved.

I was inspired to fancy up my old guitar head by this nice slab of 8/4 walnut…

a little resawing later…

followed by some joining, and hardware finding and fitting, I had this head. I just mimicked the existing plywood head for size & shape, and an old image of a “custom” build option from a Mesa Boogie catalog for the styling inspiration (mainly, the cane grille).

The finish is sanded to 220, a coat of natural Danish oil, followed by 5-6 coats of brushed blonde shellac, sanded between coats, and topped with some dark paste wax applied with 0000 steel wool.

As this came out well, I’ll be making the matching speaker cabinet in a few months.

I had wanted to try my hand at doing simple inlay, and had a few pieces of 4/4 walnut lying around that I thought would be a good candidate for the experiment. Also, we had a need for a place to put serving dishes, hot things, and salt & pepper sets, etc, on the kitchen table I finished this summer. So the idea for this simple project was born.

I started with the design, a simple cluster of ginkgo leaves…

I printed out the image, made a master on tracing paper, and then transferred the various shapes to my inlay material with carbon paper. What was not so simple was trying to cut out the ginkgo shape with bench chisels, or even a few carving gouges. And I don’t have a chevalet. I opted instead to try it out on a newly acquired tool, a scroll saw that I bought from my woodworking pal David…

... it’s an old dog, nothing fancy, but after cleaning it up, trying out a few blades and tweaking its setting, it worked pretty well.

For the inlay materials, I used curly maple (leaves), elm (stems), and poplar (branch). And for cutting out the shape in the walnut, I used a plunge router with either a 1/8” straight bit, or a tiny 1/16” straight bit. I also used caving tools to tidy things up as needed. The whole exercise was a lesson in patience, and learning how much hand-eye coordination I needed to acquire for this sort of thing.

After the first attempt, I stopped at the leaves, realizing this pass was a wipeout. So I flipped the board over, and went at it again, and got much better results…

... not perfect, but acceptable. After that, I made a simple base, and applied oil, then blonde shellac and some spray lacquer. Finally, I used an old lazy susan hardware ring that was laying around, and voila.

This was a simple throwaway project where failure was probable, and a good “skill builder” to try a new technique. I’m now much more confident that I could apply this to something bigger or more prominent in the future. Definitely a lot of fun, and I’m happy that I got to terms with the scroll saw. Luckily, it turned out well.

Just another reminder that there are a million branches and rabbit holes in the world of woodworking, and you can (and should) get lost easily following new technique and methods.

This is an exterior kitchen door that I recently completed. This was a replacement for an ugly home center prehung steel & foam door. This one is quarter sawn white oak, with hand cut mortise & tenon joinery, with drawbored pegs, and an insulated & tempered glass lite. The door was fitted with a vintage Sargent mortise lockset, and modern hinges. The door frame was rebuilt with red oak that matched the kitchen trim, and insulated with brass spring strip insulation.

Building a door seemed intimidating, but it was really just “big”. I used both the famous “Build Your Own Front Door” article from FIne Woodworking May/June 2012 issue, and Bob Lang’s “Shop Drawings for Craftsman Interiors” as starting points. I took a little from each one to arrive at my build. I bloged about the build here…

The lamp is a popular one, take a look on LJs and you’ll see about 5 or so different builds of it. It’s from a set of plans from Wood magazine. But it’s so damn perfect, I had to give it a whirl. Plus I had a lot of qtr sawn white oak left over from my recent table build.

Although the angles on the frame for the shade look tricky, the plans did all the thinking for me. The “trick” was to make sure the face was on the flat side of the frames, so the ray flecks would show. Its too easy to cut them so the side grain is showing instead. It took a couple of weekends to put together, and was a lot of fun. I finished it with water based dye, sprayed garnet shellac, and then some dark paste wax. The mica for the shade and the hardware came from a kit offered with the plans. I started out trying to piece that together myself, but I ended up about 30% more than the kit, so I ordered it and was glad I did.

This is a table I just completed for my house. It is made of quarter sawn white oak, with a water based dye, shellac, and then oil & urethane finish. I purchased the wooden table slides, rather than try and build them, and it can accommodate two 11” leaves (shown in the last picture). It’s very solid, even with the two leaves in place. It’s my best effort to date, and my first “big boy” piece.

I went into the shop today to start work on a kitchen table, and somehow, ended up with this. Sometimes I need to do a simple, little project, to “clear my palette” before starting something big.

I’d recently signed up for a one day hand tool woodworking class on dovetails, and we’re required to bring a few of our own tools; a spread of chisels, a dovetail saw, square, marking knife, awl, etc. as my tools never leave my shop (except when they get into my house for trim work), and I just didn’t like the idea of bringing them in a plastic tool box, cardboard box, or backpack.

I spied some nice clear pine scrap, a 3/8” cherry panel, and a 1” oak dowel, and came up with this. I added the sliding tray later, as it holds chisels and other handled tools well. It was all done with hand tools, except a couple of rips on my band saw. Finished with boiled linseed oil (old school!).

This is a window bench, or banquette, that I built to match the kitchen cabinets in our Craftsman style house. The whole kitchen project, starting with the refurbishing of the sash windows shown here, was started 2 years ago, and after everything else was done, this is one of the last bits.

It is made from red oak and red oak plywood. The darker finish is a General Finishes stain with shellac and water based poly, and the bench seats/doors are danish oil black walnut with Arm-R-Seal. The bottoms of the cabinets are lined with ship-lapped 1/2 cedar. The only non-standard element is the slightly angled trim on the top against the wall. It struck me as a way to add a little interest and character to the bench, and the angle mimics the trim detail on top of the windows. I really got my trim carpentry on with this project, and it was fun using power tools to do the rough sizing, and hand tools to do the trimming and fitting. There are still a few shavings from the last trimming to clean up! I also had to re-direct two electrical outlets and a floor heat vent.

I’ll be adding 2” cushions for the bench tops, and will be building the kitchen table that will go here too. I’ll do a build blog on that.

I just finished my project blog on this build here. If you want to follow along the build.

It’s a skinnier version of the classic shaker hall table. This project held a few firsts for me: hand cut half blind dovetails for the drawers, and tapered legs using a taper jig. The finish is natural Danish oil followed by several coats of 50-50 clear and amber shellac.

It’s my best effort to date, and a gift to my sister for her new house.